IER President Thomas Pyle released the following statement in response to the president’s energy speech:

“This week, the president has acknowledged that more oil production is the answer to rising gas prices. The only problem is that his administration’s policy is to ask the Saudis to produce more oil, rather than open up billions of acres of federal lands here in the United States for exploration and development.

“Why the president prefers to create jobs in Riyadh and Mecca rather than in Mobile and Pascagoula defies understanding. Meanwhile, he continues to perpetuate the myth that America only possesses 2 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. The truth is that we have hundreds of years of oil and gas under our feet at current consumption levels.

“The president continues to call for a discriminatory tax policy that increases the cost of domestic production, as if those costs would not find their way to the pump and American consumers. In one breath, he claims that he wants to bring gas prices down. In the next, he proposes policies that would keep them climbing.

“Everything this president has done — from denying the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline to canceling millions of acres in lease sales on the outer continental shelf — has made America more dependent on oil from the Middle East and more vulnerable to price spikes when that supply chain is threatened.”